[UPDATED] Windows 10 Pro Licenses Are Being Downgraded To Windows 10 Home

If you have a valid Windows 10 Pro license, you may be waking up to a puzzling notification asking you to activate your copy of Windows 10. That’s because there’s a strong chance it may have been accidentally downgraded to Windows 10 Home.

The report comes courtesy of WindowsLatest, and it’s a fairly fresh bug currently seeing a lot of activity on Reddit.

Has your Windows 10 Pro suddenly become Windows 10 Home?Microsoft

“All of a sudden after years of having this key which was from windows 8 pro then migrated to windows 10 for free, I got a notification saying my key is Windows 10 home version and that I need to install it.”

At time of publication, the Reddit post was published 7 hours ago and has 86 comments, comprised mostly of users echoing the complaint.

“Also got this de-activation of Pro tonight. I’ve always run Pro since the early insider days, this digital license copy of Pro (non-insider) has been activated for ages. Tonight, poof.”

“I am having the same problem. It’s even gone as far as my digital entitlement is gone from my Microsoft account and I have a Windows 10 home key now. Windows is deactivated because I went from Windows 10 Pro to home and it doesn’t match anymore.”

“This just happened to me. 100% legit pro key that was upgraded when windows 10 released. My second PC with windows 10 home is unaffected. A reboot got rid of the water mark on the desktop but system info still says windows is not activated.”

“Same issue on Dell computers running Windows 10 Pro 1803 that we just bought. Need to deploy to clients but they wont activate. Office activated fine but Windows nope.”

The deactivation and downgrade issue seems to be occurring in several countries including the US, UK, Japan and Korea. There are dozens more of these comments rolling in across social media and forums, but the common thread seems to be that these users had prior Windows 7 or Windows 8 Professional keys before upgrading to Windows 10.

UPDATE: One of my Twitter followers says he was affected by this bug on a new laptop that was upgraded from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro.

Because your article just stopped me from panicking, I’ll let you know that it doesn’t only affect those upgrading from Win 7 or 8. Mine is a new laptop this year, upgraded within a week from Home to Pro.

Unlike so many otherunresolvedissues with Windows 10 in the past month, this one shouldn’t cause you undue stress. The good news is that Microsoft engineers are aware of the problem.

A moderator has responded to the issue on the Microsoft Answers forum (via Windows Latest), saying “there is a temporary issue with Microsoft’s activation server at the moment and some customers might experience this issue where Windows is displayed as not activated. Our engineers are working tirelessly to resolve this issue and it is expected to be corrected within one to two business days.”

If you’re unable or unwilling to wait on a fix, follow these instructions: hit your Windows key, type “SLUI 04” in the search box, select SLUI 04, and then follow the instructions on the screen to activate Windows. Note that if you’re running Windows 10 Pro EDU or Windows 10 for Workstations, phone-based activation troubleshooting may not work.

Here’s to hoping the solution materializes. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, but if you’ve encountered this problem and it hasn’t gone away within 72 hours, please reach out to me on Twitter and let me know.

UPDATE: We have an official comment from Microsoft on this situation: “A limited number of customers experienced an activation issue that our engineers have now addressed. Affected customers will see resolution over the next 24 hours as the solution is applied automatically. In the meantime, they can continue to use Windows 10 Pro as usual.” – Jeff Jones, Sr. Director, Microsoft.